About a year ago I stopped making regular updates to this blog to concentrate on my Namnesia Antidote blog. While that is an ongoing effort, I am starting what should be about a year long effort to revitalize the concept of a "This Day in History" blog. I have decided to leave this blog intact and as-is, using a new "This Day in History 2.0" blog for my expanded and full version. Please feel free to email with your ideas. The two tables below should allow you to find a posting for the "Day in History" you wish to research.

Friday, August 31, 2007

August 31......

August 31 is the 243rd (244th in leap years) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 122 days remaining in the year on this date.

Best Liberal Quote of the Day: On Bigotry & Prejudice "Prejudices are what fools use for reason." — Francois Voltaire

Stupidest and/or Scariest Quote from the Right for the Day: On Cakewalk: Ongoing War "Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." — Vice-President Dick Cheney. "Meet the Press," NBC, 3-16-03.

Dumbest Thing Said for the Day: From Politics "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.-- -- -- -- --I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964." — Ronald "Say Whatever It Takes To Get Elected" Reagan

Thought for the day: "There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me."

{Disclaimer: I have attempted to give credit to the many different sources that I get entries. Any failure to do so is unintentional. Any statement enclosed by brackets like these are the opinion of the blogger, A Proud Liberal.}

● 1688 - Death of English Puritan clergyman and writer John Bunyan, 69. Imprisoned several times between 1660 and 1672, Bunyan used these periods of isolation to pen his two literary masterpieces, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and Pilgrim's Progress (1678).

● 1757 - Anglican clergyman and hymn writer John Newton wrote in a letter: 'I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.'

● 1772 - Hurricane destroy ships off Dominica

● 1778 - British kill 17 Stockbridge Indians in the Bronx during Revolution

● 1779 - Runovea, an Iroquoian town in upstate New York, burned by Gen. Sullivan.

● 1811 - Fort Okanogan established at confluence of Columbia and Okanogan Rivers; Indians meet Astorians with pledges of friendship and gifts of beaver.

● 1823 - Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain when invited French forces entered Cadiz. The event is known as the Battle of Trocadero.

● 1824 - Birth of Anna B. Warner, American hymn writer. She never married, but lived with her sister Susan in New York state. In 1860, a novel they co-authored contained a poem which became one of the most beloved of all children's hymns: I Know.'

● 1842 - US Naval Observatory authorized by an act of Congress

● 1850 - California Pioneers organized at Montgomery & Clay Streets

● 1852 - The first pre-stamped envelopes were created with legislation of the U.S. Congress.

● 1861 - Birth of Jesse Brown Pounds, American hymn writer. During her lifetime, she published 9 books, 50 cantatas and over 400 religious song texts. Three of her hymns remain popular today: "Anywhere With Jesus," "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" and "The Way of the Cross Leads Home."

● 1864 - American Civil War: Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta, Georgia, with the Battle of Jonesborough.

● 1870 - Birth of Maria Montessori, Italian educator. She developed a theory of teaching which emphasized a reinforcement of initiative, and a freedom of movement for the child. Her theory of elementary education has since been named, appropriately, the "Montessori Method."

● 1886 - 110 people were killed when an earthquake struck Charleston, SC. First major earthquake recorded in eastern US.

● 1887 - The kinetoscope was patented by Thomas Edison. The device was used to produce moving pictures.

● 1888 - The body of Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial killer "Jack the Ripper" is found murdered and mutilated in Buck's Road. The East End of London sees five more victims of the murderer over the next three months; while a royal figure is suspected, no one is ever nailed. Today, in the U.S., such a spree would soon be forgotten.

● 1925 - U.S. Marines end eleven-year occupation of Haiti. The dictatorship {"Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier} they leave in place continues to pillage and murder Haitians for another 60 years, rendering destitute what was once the wealthiest country in the Western Hemisphere.

● 1929 - The Trade Union Unity League founded as 690 delegates from 18 states cut the cord with the conservative American Federation of Labor, which still organizes along craft lines. An arm of the Communist Party, the league pushed for unionizing workers along industrial lines, and led struggles of miners, textile workers and farm workers. At its peak, it had 125,000 members. In 1930 it led almost a million jobless workers in a dozen cities to demand relief and unemployment insurance. The TUUL dissolved before the great organizing drives of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the late 1930s.

● 1935 - The act of exporting U.S. arms to belligerents was prohibited by an act signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

● 1939 - Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on Gleiwitz radio station, giving them an excuse to attack Poland the following day, starting World War II in Europe. {Their equivalent of Poland having WMDs.}

● 1942 - In Ternopil, western Ukraine, at 4.30 am, German SS organise the first deportation of Jews from Ternopil ghetto to death camp in Belzec, about 5,000 Jews were deported to face death in Belzec. When the Germans captured Ternopil, about 18,000 Jews lived in the city.

● 1943 - The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for a black person, is commissioned.

● 1969 - The boxer Rocky Marciano died in an airplane crash in Iowa the day before his 46th birthday.

● 1970 - Lonnie McLucas, a Black Panther activist, convicted

● 1970 - Philadelphia police raid office of local Black Panthers Party. Among those arrested is a young teen, Wesley Cook, later known as Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal would be sentenced to death in a highly questionable trial in 1983, in part because of his teenage association with the Black Panthers.

● 1974 - In federal court, John Lennon testifies the Nixon Administration tried to have him deported because of his involvement with the anti-war demonstrations at the 1972 Republican convention in Miami.

● 1988 - A Delta Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas. Fourteen people were killed in the accident that was later blamed on the crew's failure to set the wing flaps in their proper position.

● 1988 - Five-day power blackout of downtown Seattle begins.

● 1989 - Jim Bakker had an apparent breakdown in his attorney's office. This interrupted the fraud and conspiracy trial the PTL founder was undergoing.

● 1990 - East and West Germany signed a treaty that meant the harmonizing of political and legal systems.

● 1990 - U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to try and negotiate a solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

● 1991 - In a "Solidarity Day" protest hundreds of thousands of union members marched in Washington, DC.

● 1991 - Kyrgyzstan declares its independence from the Soviet Union.

● 1991 - Uzbekistan and Kirghiziz declared their independence from the Soviet Union. They were the 9th and 10th republics to announce their plans to secede.

● 1992 - Pascal Lissouba is inaugurated as the President of the Republic of the Congo .

● 1992 - White separatist Randy Weaver surrendered to authorities in Naples, Idaho, ending an 11-day siege by federal agents that claimed the lives of Weaver's wife, son and a deputy U.S. marshal.

● 1993 - Russia withdrew its last soldiers from Lithuania.

● 1994 - After 50-years of military presence in Germany, troops of the former Soviet Union depart the former East Germany during a ceremony presided over by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Also leave Latvia and Estonia.

● 1994 - Irish Republican Army declares truce in its decades-old struggle for independence for Northern Ireland. Truce dissolves in early 1996 after repeated recalcitrance by British government over terms of negotiation.

● 1995 - Judge Lance Ito ruled that only two tapes of racist comments by Mark Fuhrman could be played in the trial of O. J. Simpson. {This was only one of several bad legal rulings Ito would make letting Simpson get away with murder.}

● 1996 - Nadine Lockwoods body was found in her family's apartment by New York City police. The four-year-old girl had been starved to death.

● 1999 - The first of a series of Russian Apartment Bombings in Moscow, killing one person and wounding 40 others.

● 2001 - A Bronx, N.Y., team's third-place finish in the Little League World Series was ruled invalid because one player was two years older than the age limit of 12. {Indicative of a New York attitude, getting caught was bad, the act itself was not.}

● Roman Catholic:● St. Abundius● St. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, monastic founder● St. Albertinus● St. Amatus● St. Aristides● St. Caesidius● St. Dominic del Val● St. Paulinus of Trier● St. Raymond Nonnatus, cardinal, ransomer of captives● Sts. Theodotus, Rufina, and Ammia● Bl. Richard Bere

● Russian Orthodox Christian Menaion Calendar for August 18 (Civil Date: August 31)● Afterfeast of the Dormition.● Martyrs Florus and Laurus of Illyria● Martyrs Hermes, Serapion and Polyaenus of Rome.● Martyrs Hilarion, Dionysius and Hermippus; Hieromartyr Emilian, and others (about 1,000) of Italy.● Saints John and George, Patriarch of Constantinople.● St. Barnabas and his nephew St. Sophronius, monks of Mt. Mela near Trebizond.● St. Christopher, abbot of Mt. Mela Monastery.● Repose of St. John, abbot of Rila.● St. Sophronius of St. Anne's Skete on Mt. Athos.● St. Arsenius the New of Paros.

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About Me

Life long Liberal. Actually saw JFK on campaign trail. Defining moment of my life was the assassination of JFK. First presidential election I participated in was knocking on doors for McGovern, have been tilting at windmills ever since.